Bend City Council Business Meeting and Work Session - October 15, 2025
Bend City Council Business Meeting and Work Session - October 15, 2025
The Bend City Council convened on October 15, 2025, for a work session from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. focused on council goals including process updates, economic prosperity, website redesign, and a dashboard preview. The regular business meeting began at 6:00 p.m. and included a consent agenda, a quasi-judicial rezoning hearing, approval of property tax exemptions for two affordable housing developments, authorization of Franklin Avenue Shelter funding, adoption of the Emblem Tax Increment Finance Plan, and the city manager’s report.
Consent Calendar
- Approved the consent agenda minus Item C (Engineering Quarterly Report). Items included: approval of August 6, 2025, council meeting minutes; monthly financial report for August; approval of post-project evaluations for the Murphy Corridor Improvements, Overturf Reservoir, and Awbrey Butte Water Distribution projects; and authorization of a contract with Wire Works LLC for police vehicle upfitting services not to exceed $698,122.97.
- Item C was pulled by Councilor Franzosa for discussion. She requested clearer formatting and more detail on project schedules and funding sources. Staff agreed to improve the report. The Engineering Quarterly Report for Q1 of fiscal year 2026 was then approved.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Public comments focused heavily on the upcoming electrification policy and climate pollution fee. Speakers included Amelia DeBose, Gary North, Rowan Lucas, Travis Davis, Michaela May, Jeff McGillivray, Jade O'Hare Vlachos, Sherry Helt, Alan Spector (Cascade Natural Gas), Brad Archuleta (UA Local 290), and Brendan Green. Some urged adoption of a strong climate pollution fee to protect public health and the environment; others cautioned about increased housing costs, grid reliability, and energy affordability. Alan Spector highlighted a dual-fuel heat pump pilot starting in November.
- Mary Murphy, representing Latino Community Association, spoke in strong support of the Verde Pines affordable housing project, noting the need for stable housing for working families.
- John Fisher, representing the Old Bend Neighborhood Association, requested improved communication and collaboration on the parking district plan.
Discussion Items
- Council Goals Update Process: Eric King presented changes to move quarterly goal updates into regular work sessions starting January 2026, with multidisciplinary teams focused on metrics. Each goal area now has a sponsor from the city manager’s office.
- Economic Prosperity: Katie Brooks and Jonathan presented data on Bend’s economy: population growth (37% since 2010), employment resilience, income disparities (households earning $200k+ increased 154% since 2019), housing affordability (only 16% of households could afford a first-time home at current rates), and commercial real estate vacancy (office 5.4%, industrial 2.4%, retail 4.1%). Stakeholder engagement included focus groups, surveys (over 150 responses), and interviews. Guiding principles from the focus group were inclusive growth, customer service, adaptable policy, and accountability. The economic development plan is expected in Q1/Q2 2026.
- Website Improvement: Renee Mitchell, Jacob Riggald, and Carrie Dodd presented the new city website launching January 2026. The site moves to WordPress with human-centered design, improved search, WCAG 2.1 accessibility, a new brand (“One Bend, Built Together”), and a translation tool (WeGlot). The site has been reduced from 1,000+ pages to under 800. User testing is planned in December 2025.
- Dashboard Preview: Jesse presented the new council dashboard focusing on performance metrics rather than action items. It integrates branding, mobile-friendly design, and links to data hubs (housing, fire, police, transportation). The dashboard updates nightly.
- Quasi-judicial Public Hearing – Rezone 1.93 acres (Pacific Crest Middle School): Planner Nicholas Ingersoll presented the application to change the comprehensive plan and zoning from Urban Area Reserve (UAR-10) to Residential Urban Medium Density (RM). The hearings officer recommended approval. Applicant Grace Wager (Habitat for Humanity) stated the site will yield 15 net-zero affordable homes, with 5 employer-deed-restricted. No public testimony was offered. Councilor Platt recused himself due to his employment with Bend-La Pine Schools. The motion passed 6-0.
- Property Tax Exemptions – Cascade Landing and Verde Pines: Carrie Bell presented two 20-year low-income property tax exemption applications. Cascade Landing (98 units, 60% AMI or less) estimated 20-year impact of $7 million to all taxing districts; Verde Pines (128 units, 60% AMI or less) estimated $5 million impact. Both received unanimous approval from the Bend-La Pine School Board. Developers emphasized the exemptions are critical for the capital stack and for serving 30% AMI households. Discussion included parking, commercial land loss, and state mandates. Both resolutions were approved unanimously.
- Franklin Avenue Shelter Funding: Brooke O’Keefe presented the need to accept a $974,561.70 grant from Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council (COIC) and amend the contract with Shepherd’s House Ministries by $890,349 for a total contract not to exceed $3,624,493. The shelter has provided 46,000 nights of shelter, maintained 98% utilization, and supported 64 transitions to permanent housing. The grant covers the remainder of fiscal year 2026. Both motions were approved.
- Emblem Tax Increment Finance Plan: Second reading and adoption by roll call vote. The ordinance adopts the Emblem TIF Plan and establishes the TIF area. Motion passed 6-1, with Councilor Franzosa voting no.
Key Outcomes
- Consent agenda approved minus Item C; Item C approved separately after discussion.
- Rezoning of 1.93 acres from UAR-10 to RM for affordable housing approved (6-0, Councilor Platt recused).
- Property tax exemptions for Cascade Landing (98 units) and Verde Pines (128 units) approved unanimously.
- Authorization to accept a $974,561.70 grant from COIC and amend Shepherd’s House contract by $890,349 for Franklin Avenue Shelter approved.
- Emblem Tax Increment Finance Plan adopted on second reading (6-1).
- City Manager Eric King announced the new Public Works campus is open, the Skyline Ranch roundabout is complete, and a temporary closure of Wall and Olney from October 27–29 is scheduled for sewer work. BNSF crossing work is expected to begin November 17, with the goal of reopening the full corridor by year-end.
Meeting Transcript
We're ready. It's a little earlier than we used to now with the schedule, but this will be the last time. All right, so we'll go ahead and call to order the um work session or sort of council goals update part of the meeting tonight. Um and we start with Eric with proposed changes to how we're gonna do this going forward. Right. So a little bit of uh process update. So you mentioned this is the last time that we're gonna combine a quarterly update with a regular business meeting. We have this new schedule where we've differentiated the work sessions from the business meeting. So moving forward, beginning in January, um the council goal updates are just gonna be woven into those uh work session meetings. Um we're gonna talk about talk in more detail about what that means and why we're making that change. We're also gonna today talk to you about economic development. That's it's a goal focus area, so you're gonna hear from Katie Brooks, our new economic development officer, and Cyrus Mooney. Um we're gonna talk about the launch of our new website in January, and we're gonna preview the dashboard that incorporates your metrics that you uh put together as part of the council goals. We have about 90 minutes worth of content uh to get through today. I'm just gonna take about five minutes walking through what's what's changed and then I'll turn it over to Katie. So we'll work the presentation up. Um I'll just keep talking here as Kate's pulling it up. So first off, um the what and the why. So the the what is we want a more hands-on approach to council goal implementation, so that's why we're moving away from just these quarterly updates, which are really about giving a lot of information to council and really be more outcome focused with uh these updates, uh, when woven into those work sessions. And why we're doing it because we want to use your time efficiently. I think you know, we we've learned having these mega long meetings where you have content and receiving all this information and going into a business meeting is a lot to digest. So we're wanting to get in sync with with that. Um to slide four, Kate. So the current state is part of what we have been doing just as a refresh, is to uh we meet internally as a staff every quarter, we meet in our goal areas and we help populate a progress report. You see that progress report every quarter. You can see what's been completed, what's in progress, or if there's something that's been flagged, you can kind of see that general high-level update. We're gonna continue to do that at a quarterly level. So you for the public for accountability on all the action items. Um what's changing is we're not going to have this work session as a standalone. We're again we're gonna incorporate that into those work session updates for those quarterly progress reports. Um, I will be just giving that as part of a city manager report in the future. And we also had an opportunity to involve our advisory boards in those quarterly updates. We're going to continue on that theme. We're going to do another summit of our advisory boards coming up here. We're going to do that once a year just to really get that synced get that synced up. We are already starting to practice that. We're going to be incorporating a variety of advisory boards into our growth plan. We're going to be in we've already planned for that for the electrification policy that you're going to be hearing about next week. So we are doing that mixing of our advisory boards. We're going to be recasting the transportation bond oversight as we've been discussing to be more broad more broad than just the GO bond. So a lot of that work is happening. So what's uh so what's new? I've been kind of talking through this already. Um, what we are doing internally is creating, and we've been doing this for a while, multidisciplinary teams that involve more than just the departments, you know, that you might traditionally think are focused, like police or fire, for example, on the police and fire goals or the public safety goals. We're involving our Office of Performance Management, our data folks, um, city manager's office, legal, really creating for each of these goal areas a team that is focused on the metrics and the data that we're in the North Star that we're trying to achieve, but doing that amongst a cross section of departments and making sure that we're being strategic and not just one-way information but workshopping issues. As I've talked about before, we've been doing this. This isn't all that new. We've been doing this with housing for the last year and a half or so. We've been doing this with our shelters for the last year. So we have some practice.
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